ART CLASS DAY 17: LETTERPRESS DAY 3 AT SFCB

Day three of the 4-day Letterpress Intensive was probably my favorite. The assignment was to “make a poster” – and after hearing about something called a split fountain or “rainbow roll” (a process of using multiple colors of ink on the roll to allow for multiple colors in one printing) I knew I wanted to try it. I picked a pretty straight-forward statement for my poster:

“The Internet will be just fine without you.”

It’s something I’d seen in a magazine and I love it because it can be read multiple ways, a delight for my quirky ex-English major mind.

Laying it out was more easy than yesterday’s assignment, since it wasn’t that many words and I used GIANT wood type (which is definitely easier to set) – I got pretty good at reading backwards words when setting type:

Rainbow Roll!

After setting the type, I had a chance to play with the ink – mixing multiple colors this time. I went with a rich, tonal purple/blue/green, it looked amazing on the roll – so I had to grab a video:

I love the way the poster turned out and I’d love to do more experimentation with multi-colors. I really like the way this process turns out on the page. Plus, the color blend changes as the roll spins, so it makes lots of variation in the final print.